Srdja Trifkovic: Ground Zero Mosque: Correcting the Non-Debate

Excerpts from a speech at Providence College given on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010.

Two sets of fallacies have dominated the mainstream debate about the Ground Zero mosque—and before we go any further, let’s get this straight: it is a mosque, frantic insistence by the Qusling elite to use one euphemistic misnomer or another notwithstanding. This means it is not merely a place of worship, but also a physical expression of the Mohammedan stake to a place at first, and eventually a symbol of Jihad’s triumph over the hated infidel—crudely visible in the prison bars of St. John’s Cathedral in Damascus and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

The gall of the project’s promoters is evident in its name, “Cordoba House,” which is not inspired by that old canard, the “Golden Age.” The mosque in Cordoba was built after the Muslim conquest of southern Spain. The invaders razed the Church of St. Vincent to erect their triumphal monument. And now a second Cordoba Mosque, right next to the scene of jihadist carnage, is meant to signify “bridge-building” and “interfaith dialogue.” Such idiocies are only possible in a society seriously, perhaps terminally diseased.

Most of those Americans who oppose this monstrosity do not deny the supposed right of the Mohammedans to go ahead with the project, but merely bemoan their insensitivity in insisting on the full exercise of that alleged “right,” and worry about the effect it will have on onter-communal relations. Those who support it—the current occupant of the White House and the controllers of the media and the academe—assert the claims of religious freedom, antidiscriminationism, human rights, tolerance, respect, and of course Islam’s peaceful benevolence. Both sides fail to grasp that the First Amendment to the Constitution of 1787 does not provide an abstract and absolute “freedom of religion.” The purpose of the First Amendment was to prevent the imposition of a centrally established denomination on the states, some of which had established churches of their own and all of which assumed “religion” to mean Christianity of some kind or another. The real issue, and the real debate we have not had thus far, is about the nature of Islam and about the deformity of the post-Christian pluralist society that postulates an absolute right of anyone to believe in anything, and to act accordingly. If Ground -Zero Mosque is built, we’ll know that this society is heading for swift self-destruction…

I am not going to waste your time tonight with yet another treatise on why Islam is not the Religion of Peace, Tolerance, Compassion, etc, etc. We are beyond that. Among reasonable people, the real score on Muhammad and his followers is well known. It has been known for centuries. That score, however, no matter how calmly stated and comprehensively supported, invariably elicits the howls of “Islamophobia” from the neoliberal elite class. Let us therefore look at the formal, legally tested definition of that word, the latest addition to the arsenal of postmodern “phobias.” It is provided by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights based in Vienna. It diligently tracks the instances of “Islamophobia” all over the Old Continent, which it defines by eight red flags:

1. Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.

2. Islam is seen as separate and “Other.”

3. Islam is seen as inferior to the West, barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.

4. Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, linked to terrorism, engaged in a clash of civilizations.

This definition is obviously intended to preclude any meaningful discussion of Islam. As it happens, each of those eight “red flags” is a reasonable and valid position to take:

1. That Islam is static and unresponsive to change is evident from the absence of an internal, orthodox critique of jihad, sharia, jizya, etc. As Clement Huart pointed out back in 1907, “Until the newer conceptions, as to what the Koran teaches as to the duty of the believer towards non-believers, have spread further and have more generally leavened the mass of Moslem belief and opinion, it is the older and orthodox standpoint on this question which must be regarded by non-Moslems as representing Mohammedan teaching and as guiding Mohammedan action.” A century later his diagnosis still stands.

2. The view of Islam as the existential foe of Europe and its civilization—its outré-mer offspring included—is based on Islam’s own teaching and 14 centuries of blood-soaked practice. That Islam is utterly incompatible with Christian, European culture and civilization, and that it is “other” than our culture and civilization, is a fact that will not change even if the West eventually succumbs to the ongoing jihadist demographic and psychological onslaught.

3. Whether Islam is “inferior to the West” is a matter of opinion. That Islam cannot create a prosperous, harmonious, stable, creative, free and attractive human society is not. Whether Islam is “barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist” or not, its tangible fruits are so.

4. Islam is seen by so many as “violent, aggressive, supportive of terrorism” not because of some irrational “phobia” in the feverish mind of the beholder, but because (a) of the clear mandate of its scripture; (b) of the appalling record of its centuries of historical practice; and above all (c) of the timeless and obligatory example of its founder, an evil, violent, and aggressive man.

5. “Islam is seen as a political ideology,” and it should be seen as one, because its key trait is a political program to improve man and create a new society; to impose complete control over that society; and to train cadres ready and eager to spill blood. This makes Islam closer to Bolshevism and to National Socialism than to any other religion. It breeds a gnostic paradigm within which the standard response to the challenge presented by “the Other,” i.e. non-Muslim societies and cultures, is implacable hostility and violence, or violent intent.

6. Criticisms made of the West by Islam should not be rejected out of hand; they should be understood. But its chief “criticism” of the West—and of every other non-Islamic culture or tradition—is that it is infidel, and therefore undeserving of existence.

7. A priori hostility towards Islam should not be “used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims.” It should be a posteriori: an education campaign about the teaching and practice of Islam should result in legislative action that would exclude Islam from the societies it is targeting—not because it is an intolerant “religion,” but because it is an inherently seditious totalitarian ideology incompatible with the values of the West.

8. And finally, while anti-Muslim hostility is not a priori “natural or normal,” the desire of non-Muslims to defend their lands, families, cultures and faith against Islamic aggression is “natural and normal”; but the elite class is actively trying to neutralize it.

The EU definition of “Islamophobia” may seem somewhat too lax to President Obama; but it is merely one among many fruits of our leaders’ moral decrepitude. Both here and in Europe they impose a dreary sameness of “antidiscriminationism” and “tolerance.” Such weakness breeds contempt and haughty arrogance on the other side. Take Tariq Ramadan, who calmly insists that Muslims in the West should conduct themselves as though they were already living in a Muslim-majority society and were exempt on that account from having to make any concessions to the host-society. Muslims in the West should feel entitled to live on their own terms, Ramadan says, while, “under the terms of Western liberal tolerance,” society as a whole should be “obliged to respect that choice.”

If such “respect” continues to be extended by the elite class, by the end of this century there will be no “Europeans” as members of ethnic groups that share the same language, culture, history, and ancestors, and inhabit lands associated with their names. The shrinking native populations will be indoctrinated into believing—or else simply forced into accepting—that the demographic shift in favor of unassimilable and hostile aliens is actually a blessing that enriches their culturally deprived and morally unsustainable societies. The “liberal tolerance” and the accompanying “societal obligation” that Tariq Ramadan invokes thus become the tools of Western suicide. “No other race subscribes to these moral principles,” Jean Raspail wrote a generation ago, “because they are weapons of self-annihilation.” The weapons need to be discarded, and the upholders of those deadly “principles” removed, if we are to survive.

The alternative is the Westerners’ loss of the sense of propriety over their lands, evident in the Ground Zero Mosque non-debate. The neoliberal elite insists on casting aside any idea of a specifically “American” geographic and cultural space that should be protected from those who do not belong to it and have no rightful claim to it: America belongs to the whole world. We face an elite consensus that de facto open immigration, multiculturalism, and the existence of a large Muslim diaspora within the Western world are to be treated as a fixed and immutable fact that must not be scrutinized. In addition, a depraved mass culture and multiculturalist indoctrination in state schools and the mainstream media have already largely neutralized the sense of historical and cultural continuity among young West Europeans and North Americans. By contrast, the blend of soft porn and consumerism that targets every denizen of the Western world has not had the same effect on the Muslim diaspora in the West. The roll-call of Western-born and educated young Muslims supportive of terrorism confirms that failure…

There will never be, as there has never been, any synthesis, any civilizational cross-fertilization, between the West and Islam. Even the ultra-tolerant Dutch are beginning to see the light, pace Geert Wilders, but they are hamstrung by guilt-ridden self-haters and appeasers, whose hold on the political power, the media, and the academe is undemocratic, unnatural, and obscene. If we are to survive, they need to be unmasked for what they are: traitors to their nations and their culture. They must be replaced by people ready and willing to subject the issues of immigration and identity to the test of democracy, unhindered by administrative or judicial fiat.

The first task is to start talking frankly about the identity and character of the enemy and the nature of the threat, regardless of the threat of legal sanction. We know the enemy. We know his core beliefs, his role models, his track-record, his mindset, his modus operandi, and his intentions. We also know his weaknesses, which are many, above all his inability to develop a prosperous economy or a functional, harmonious society, his inability to think rationally and therefore to develop science, and his utter lack of creativity in any field of human endeavor. The main problem is with ourselves; or, to be precise, with those among us who have the power to make policy and shape opinions. Abroad, we are told, we need to address political and economic grievances of the Muslim masses, to spread democracy and free markets in the Muslim world, to invest more in public diplomacy. At home we need more tolerance, greater inclusiveness, less profiling, and a more determined outreach. The predictable failure of such cures leads to ever more pathological self-scrutiny and morbid self-doubt. This vicious circle must be broken…

Among reasonable, well-informed citizens the debate must be conducted on terms liberated from the shackles of the elite class. We should act accordingly, and never fear being subjected to the threat of legal proceedings by the neoliberal state—or to the threat of death, by those whom the neoliberal state continues to protect to the detriment of its own citizens.

Western leaders did not agonize over communism’s “true” nature during the Berlin air lift in 1949, or in Korea in 1950, but acted effectively to contain it by whatever means necessary. Yes, back then we had a legion of Moscow’s apologists, character witnesses, moles and fellow-travelers, assuring us that the Comrades want nothing but social justice at home and peaceful coexistence abroad. They held tenured chairs at prestigious universities and dominated all smart salons, from London and Paris to New York. They explained away and justified the inconsistencies and horrifyingly violent implications of the source texts of Marx and Lenin. They explained away and justified the appalling fruits: the bloodbath of the Revolution, the genocidal great famine, the show trials and purges, the killing of millions of innocents in the Gulag, the pact with Hitler, the works.

Today their heirs in politics, the academy and the media act as Islam’s apologists, character witnesses and fellow travelers. They flatly deny or else explain away, with identical sophistry and moral depravity, the dark and violent implications of the source texts, the Kuran and the Hadith, the deeply unnerving career of Muhammad, and centuries of conquests, wars, slaughters, subjugation, decline without fall, spiritual and material misery, and murderous fanaticism.

The fact that many normal people don’t realize the magnitude of the problem works to the advantage of the traitors among us. Their ideas, which but two generations ago would have been deemed eccentric or insane, now rule the Euro-American mainstream. Only a diseased society can be told, without reacting violently, that Islam is good and tolerant, that “we” (the West) have been nasty and unkind to it over the centuries—the Crusades!—and that “terrorism” needs to be understood, and cured, by social therapy that is independent of Islam’s teaching and practice.

At the root of the domestic malaise is the notion that countries do not belong to the people who have inhabited them for generations, but to whoever happens to be within their boundaries at any given moment in time. The resulting random melange of mutually disconnected multitudes is supposed to be a blessing that enriches an otherwise arid and monotonous society. A further fallacy is the view that we should not feel a special bond for a particular country, nation, race, or culture, but transfer our preferences on the whole world, the Humanity, equally. Such notions have been internalized by the elite class in America and Western Europe to the point where they actively help Islamic terrorism.

Those among us who put their families and their neighborhoods and their lands before all others, are normal people. Those who tell them that their attachments should be global and that their lands and neighborhoods belong to the whole world are sick and evil. They are the Enemy and jihad’s objective allies. It is up to the millions of normal people to stop the madness.

The traitor class wants them to share its death wish, to self-annihilate as people with a historical memory and a cultural identity, and to make room for the post-human, monistic Utopia spearheaded by the jihadist fifth column. This crime, epitomized by Ground Zero Mosque, can and must be stopped.

The alternative is decline, collapse and death, moral and spiritual first. You’ll know, if the Ground Zero mosque is built, that we’re almost there.

Comments

Mr Trifkovic, I applaud your words. I especially like two points you raised that nobody else (to my knowledge) has raised:

1. The “Quisling Elite” touche! and
2. The “Mohammedan Faith.”

The latter is particularly apt because it is not a religion we are talking about, but a theocratic Maoism. A political ideology that honors its founder. Like honest Muslims, I applaud their defense against blasphemy, but the hypocrisy of their indictment against Christiannity worshiping Jesus is laid bare, in that we do worship Jesus, who is the Second Person of the Trinity. They stress how wrong we are, that no man is worthy of worship. Yet they condemn as “blasphemy” any derogation of Mohammed. That only makes sense if Mohammed was (is) likewise an incarnation of the Godhead (however one conceives it).

Of course “Mohammedan” is an old locution but I’d like to see it brought to use again, since by their own actions, the jihadis strive to emulate him in every respect. Voltaire’s criticism of Christians –that we worship the messenger and not the message–is clearly displayed in the jihadi lifestyle.

Personally, I’ve been a live and let live kind of guy all my life. But the jihadis refuse to let us live as we please. As long as Muslims assimilate to Western ways while they are in the West, then I have no problem. Unfortunately, the Quislings who rule us use them I believe to demolish Christianiy. So now we come full circle.

Thank you for this article. I think it’s one of the best articulations on the subject I’ve ever read.

Here’s my honest question: Given this understanding, now what? What can we do to stop the spread of this type of Islam, the type that doesn’t want “to assimilate to Western ways while living in the the West” (to quote the commentor above) and wants to destroy the Judeo/Christian values of the West? Especially, what can/should we as Christians do?

After reading a such a well articulated picture of the state of Islam in our day, I want to know what I should do now. What is my responsibility as a grandmother, a godmother, an American citizen, and as a Christian. As an ambassador of Christ to all people, what would God have me do in my sphere of influence? This is a hard question for me. I struggle with a lot of fear when I consider the possible future my grandchildren could inherit.

I keep going back to passages such as “… Faith, hope and love. The greatest of these is love.” “Love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself.” “God is love.” “As far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all men.” “The kindness of God leads one to repentance.” Etc. Should we be agressive with love? Should we, rather than hide from these people, seek them out and love them—one-on-one? Should we see ourselves as “missionaries” to the Muslim community?

From a political standpoint, the loop-holes in our constitution, with regards to “freedom of religion” and tolerance, need to be addressed. I have no desire to enter the political arena and I despise the so-called Christian rhetoric I see put forth in the media. But I do realize that something has to change politically in how we view freedom and tolerance in our society.

So, what can and should we as Christians, and in my case an Orthodox Christian, do now?

Hi, Gail! Very good question you ask. This is how I feel as well and quite emphatically. As you had so astutely inquired with vigor, “Great! What do we do now?!” I am sure we’ve all heard that slogan, “Knowledge Is Power,” and until many people actually start to read and flee their myspaces, facebooks, reality and talkshow t.v., etc. ad nauseum, then this willful ignorance and arrogance will sadly continue to pervade our culture. Much of this willful ignorance and arrogance, I feel, is aided and abetted with cowardice (masked as “tolerance”) by our variously inordinate Christian pulpits on Sunday mornings. In the movie, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Michael York as John the Baptist vociferously declares, “before kingdoms can change men must change.” Each of us has the decision to daily make the choice to spend our times wisely – cultivating our minds through reading – or vegetating in various forms of narcissistic and infantile claptrap.

Thank you Alexis. You are correct in that far too many of us choose to live in ignorance and arrogance mixed with cowardice as well. But, at some fundamental level, the people have not been given a satifactory answer to the question “So what?”

I heard it said once that, “when people have lost there way, it’s because they’ve lost their why.”

Beautiful article! Eloquent, scholarly, objective, and purely substantiated. If I am not mistaken, its author is the same man who wrote “Sword of the Prophet” and “Defeating Jihad.” Both books are sold through Regina Orthodox Press. My response to Trifkovic’s third red flag would be to read “The Great Divide” by Marvin Olasky and Alvin Schmidt. This book clearly shows in a wonderfully elucidated manner, the major differences between Christianity and Islam via teachings and contributions to world history and mankind in general. After reading this factual book, emotions, feelings and opinions aside, anyone can quickly surmise which faith is inferior.

Is it wise to moderate ‘anti-Islamic’ hyberbolic language because so many people prefer a peaceful life and are ‘Islamic’ by accident of birth wanting nothing to do with the violents aspects of that religion?

After all look at Jewish teachings– I won’t list them all but the Old Testament has some seriously harsh responses for various categories of misdoing not practiced today though still ‘on the books’ as it were.

I just wonder whether we create opponents that would prefer not to be radicalized, that would prefer not to be opponents at all. We create them because they fear being targeted for being ‘guilty’ of nothing more than being born into a religion they really are not too excited about, particularly the violent aspects.

Maybe that’s what’s informing the ‘liberal’ take on this matter, we lose the center voice owing to many ‘televised left wingers’ who go too far to attempt to deny the religious text’s actually violent content. So those of us who react to these texts might generate undue fear of reprisal against those whose essential nature and preference is not violent at all.

Gail, excellent question and I am thinking about this deeply. Give me a little time to form a response. It has no easy answer but clearly it has to do with our responsibility towards the moral renewal of American culture, the turning back of the decrepitude that Dr. Trifkovic touches on but does not define in any detail that blinds us to the nature of the threat he outlines.

Much of it deals with our loss of confidence as a people, the self-doubt that enters when personal integrity is exchanged for other things, particularly the approval of others, a dynamic that in the end enslaves. Internal tyranny makes one susceptible to a larger tyranny, that in our age disguises itself under the rubrics of tolerance, fairness — all the politically correct thinking anyone with any sense already recognizes. So it begins with a love of freedom that takes root and finds a home in the human heart, the kind of freedom that is only known and experienced in obedience to God. Mother Teresa said the freedom we have is the freedom to obey God. Others have said it is out of this obedience that freedom flows forward into peoples and culture.

One thing Dr. Trifkovic wrote struck me in a strong way, although probably differently than he intended:

In addition, a depraved mass culture and multiculturalist indoctrination in state schools and the mainstream media have already largely neutralized the sense of historical and cultural continuity among young West Europeans and North Americans. By contrast, the blend of soft porn and consumerism that targets every denizen of the Western world has not had the same effect on the Muslim diaspora in the West. The roll-call of Western-born and educated young Muslims supportive of terrorism confirms that failure…

It’s true that young people have been robbed of any sense of historical and cultural continuity. It’s a horrible loss, like being born in a chicken coop and thinking that’s home because that is all you know. The defining narratives of American culture have been supplanted by multicultural blather and cheap psychological tricks intended to foster the confidence that only the security of place and identity can give.

What struck me though was his sentence “the blend of soft porn and consumerism that targets every denizen of the Western world…” This is absolutely true. I’ve listened to probably hundreds of confessions of young men and almost all (I’d say up to 98%) consume pornography. These are our Orthodox kids. They feel guilty, you give them some advice on dealing with it, but you know that most will go right back to it. I’ve always saw it in terms of harming personal character, development, and self-identity, but never considered in any deeper way how it erodes the character of a nation in the terms that Dr. Trifkovic touches on here. Porn damages the soul, but that damage reaches much farther than just the individual.

There is such great need to examine these questions in greater detail, to understand them and shape a response. I’m thinking here of the moral renewal so necessary in our culture, but one that can only start in our Churches. So many of our leaders are asleep at the switch, but so too is much of the laity. If I could find enough funding, I would start it myself.

Anyway, I know you are asking for something more practical but this is as far as I am with it. I wholeheartedly agree with Alexis’ advice above: “Each of us has the decision to daily make the choice to spend our times wisely – cultivating our minds through reading – or vegetating in various forms of narcissistic and infantile claptrap.”

Very very well said Father. We have a serious problem on our hands. I, too agree that it begins with “spending our time wisely.” I needed to hear this and take it to heart.

I, too agree that we need to do a much better job in our churches giving people the “why” when they’ve lost their way. (I mentioned above the quote that, so often “when people have lost there way, it’s because they’ve lost their why.”

Renewal of hearts and minds has to start at home. First, in my own life, secondly in my own family, and thirdly in my church family. “Physician, heal thyself”, right? Then we move out into the world and share the Truth … in LOVE. We cannot be strident and arrogant, but we must be courageous and humble.

I’m a little too tired as I write this to say all that is on my mind, but I want you to know that I am grateful for your initiative in this and for your spirit. May our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ continue to lead and direct us, giving us wisdom and discerment.

I appreciate the dialogue between Father Jacobse and yourself. Father makes a great point in that the laity has “dropped the ball” as well as clergy and American society as a whole. It is true that we have to begin with ourselves and take personal responsibility for our faults – that we have to be “self-aware.” It always begins within ourselves, and that is why it is absolutely essential as followers of the One True Risen Lord that we have daily quiet times with Him. A daily self-introspection is a given in order for us to achieve Theosis. Consistent humility, metanoia, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and Bible study are the prescriptions for the centuries-old human afflictions. The Monks of New Skete have written a book called “In the Spirit of Happiness.” It is a gem of a weapon that should be in our daily spiritual arsenals. Check it out. And my gratitude to Father Jacobse for his recommended above article.

“Porn damages the soul, but that damage reaches much farther than just the individual.”

I’ve never reacted to pornography with disgust but rather with sadness: it promises everything but provides nothing. It’s a really poor substitute for the type of love and intimacy found even between friends. In fact, it only increases one’s sense of isolation from others as it treats others as commodities to be utilized and requires no personal sacrifice. To object to pornography isn’t about prudishness, as some might suggest.

What’s that form of Martial Arts that utilizes deflection of your opponents’ blow instead of aggressively punching back as if to suck the energy from the aggressor by falling into his aggression? (I ripped this off from one of my Priest’s past Sermons)

The article raises the point about “soft porn and consumerism” and then Father Jacobse pointed this out as well. Both the article and Father are right; and I do remember Father Jacobse speaking about this in his radio interview about the Mosque a month or so back. The US is the #1 exporter of pornography to the world. But (and many may disagree with me) the US is also following a form of international military policy that is not what our Founding Father’s envisioned- meaning our military escapades haven’t been Constitutional by any stretch of the of word. I think when you couple what we shoot out into the world “porn and our military industrial complex” i.e. fallen defense and fallen sex then perhaps there is a mustard seed’s truth to us being infidels, especially if we’re looking all of this through the Cross and not at what some imam is saying from across the pond. And personally, if women are given a choice as to how they dress (and I believe they should have a choice, not through Sharia Law but Constitutional law) I have more respect for the woman who chooses the Burqa over how some of our young ladies dress in Hollywood (or even college campuses). This is not to say that porn and war began with us, or that there aren’t much deeper issues with Islam that are a greater cause to the problem.

What the heck am I talking about? Well it goes back to deflecting the aggressive blow and how to deal with Islam. If we can admit that YES we are part of the equation with our exportation of porn and by our own breaking of our Constitution (declaring war without the Congress, the Patriot Act, Torture Prisons, Street Cameras on every corner), then PERHAPS we can suck these people of their energy, and along wit them our own secularists, and progressives along the way? Besides, I think secularism is WORSE than Islam.

BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, certain people have been talking like this in the political scene, yet haven’t been doing it incorrectly. These people, for instance, the Imam in NY, our President, NPR, and even Ron Paul for heaven’s sake have contributed to the threat of Islam from the other end of the pendulum. I don’t believe I’ll ever get over Ron Paul calling people Islamophobes because they don’t like the location of the Mosque. He lost some points with me. (But I’ll still be voting for him if he runs because of his staunch Constitutional and Christian Values.)

By saying we are part of this equation of imperfection and falleness, it doesn’t mean we hate America (or say/act like we do), or that we bow down to aggression when it is posed, or that we institute Sharia Law, or a Mosque where a Mosque shouldn’t be, or call those who stand up to bad deeds “Islamophobes,” “racists,” “hate talkers,” or that we break our Constitution (once again) to appease aggressive people.

I just think there was/is a lot more wisdom to our Founding Father’s ideals of a nation with smaller federal government, with a non-interventionist/non-nation building/non-preventive war foreign policy, and with the understanding that only a society with the pillars of Natural Law and morals can survive in the long haul. Here, even those of us “in the Right” have fallen a little short.
Perhaps these ideas would help?

Srdja Trifkovic claims “and before we go any further, let’s get this straight: it is a mosque, frantic insistence by the Qusling elite to use one euphemistic misnomer or another notwithstanding.”

No, let’s get this straight: it is a 13-story Muslim community center, modeled after the 92nd Street Y, with a restaurant, pool, basketball court, child-care center, bookstore, culinary school, art studio, and 500-seat performing arts center… and also with a prayer space.

Park51 never was a “Ground Zero” “Mosque”. Not only was it not a mosque, it’s not on Ground Zero, nor across the street from Ground Zero, nor in sight of Ground Zero, but a couple blocks away, down a side street, on the “hallowed ground” of an old Burlington Coat Factory.